Continued from My Name Is Nobody - PART ONE OF TWO

On the surface this story is simple. What attracted me to My Name Is Nobody were the many levels of symbolism and life lessons spread all over. Take for instance the story of the little bird. I posted that as an article last week for fun. If you read the article, its about a little bird that falls out of a tree. A cow comes up and drops a dung heap on it to keep it warm, then a coyote comes up brushes it off clean and then eats it. I left you readers with pondering the moral to the story for yourself.

In the movie My Name Is Nobody, the main character Nobody tells that story in the middle of the movie. He leaves Jack Beauregard in the same quandary, he says, “My grandpa said you have to figure out the moral for yourself.”

In the final moments of the story Jack Beauregard writes a letter to Nobody telling him he’s figured out the moral to his grandpa’s story of the little bird. His answer seems as relevant now as it could ever be. It’s a lesson I took with me forward through my own life.

My name is nobody. That line seems to read sadly doesn’t it? It is far from it. It is in fact an important part of my life. It’s a line that empowered me. It offered me hope and it became a way of life for me.

When I was a mere boy of 14 I was in search of my identity like most early teens. While some boys were established jocks, some boys had scholastic skills that seemed unfair, and others had charisma, I had none of these at the exceptional level in which I felt I knew what I’d do with my life.

At best I had a love for music and sang in my bed at night. That is another story.

From an early age I admired men of mystery. Men that said little, or if they spoke, their words protected them. Two types of men that fit this mold where spies and detectives. Spies would always speak in public with words meant to communicate yet protect their agenda and identity. Little of their life was open on the surface. A spy lived a sad life however because those that loved them most, may never know them, including perhaps a wife. With detectives, they saw life through a different prism, and like spies their senses were sharpened to what they saw in day-to-day life, let alone situations that required finely tuned instincts. Spies had secret lives and lexicons, while detectives read secrets. These people made sense to me. I have always been drawn to those skills. These type of men lived a life where they were essentially unseen, could blend in and saw the world around them in a way other people took for granted. I admired spies and detectives because they were strong and comfortable with being, nobody. They live around us invisibly. They are nobody.